Richard Mourdock argued in a debate that women who have been raped should not have access to abortion services because their pregnancies are a “gift from god.” As a survivor of childhood sexual violence, I disagree with him completely.

This is one of a series of powerful stories from survivors of rape, you will find them all here.

This week, Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock argued in a debate that women who have been raped should not have access to abortion services because their pregnancies are a “gift from god.” As a survivor of childhood sexual violence, I disagree with him completely.

My name is Dawn Hill. Though I am old now, there was a time when I was young and carefree as you perhaps are now or can remember being in your childhood. Childhood should be a happy and carefree time for all our children, but my mother found her new husband, my stepfather, much more important. He forever took the joy away from my life when I was just 11 years old: He began molesting me and continued until he began raping me when I was 13.

Mr. Mourdock last night said: “I came to realize life is that gift from God, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape. It is something that God intended to happen.”

I became pregnant, contrary to the “scientific theories” of many modern Republicans. Not only was the experience loathsome and painful, it was also impossible for me to deal with or talk about because of the times: in the fifties, abortion was illegal. Illegal in the same way the Republican Party platform states it wants to make abortion now by constitutional amendment and just as Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has suggested casually he would “be delighted” to return to.

Please, take a moment to travel back to the fifties with me.

My mother took me to Mexico, where anyone could get an abortion for a price. I have blocked out many memories associated with this entire experience, but I remember the pain. Illegal abortions are not the simple safe vacuum procedure used today by legal abortion providers. Oh, no: They were a “dilatation and curettage.”

This means that my cervix was mechanically opened by insertion of larger and larger metal “dilators” until it was opened enough to get a sort of sharpened spoon inside my 13-year-old uterus, while strangers looked at my exposed parts that were theretofore called “private.”

It was cold and dirty in the room, and then the true torture started. They shoved this curette into me and scraped away the entire lining of my uterus with the sharp side. I screamed the entire time even though no one had seen so much as a tear out of me before this moment because I had developed a stony stoicism to protect my mind from the molestation.

This pain was, however, like nothing I’ve ever felt before or since. Can you imagine what happened to those women and girls who couldn’t even get this barbaric abortion? They stuck wire hangers into themselves and bled to death or suffered other horrible complications. Then, too, I also got a terrible infection from the filthy conditions.

I can tell you, though, that I would have gotten a hundred illegal abortions before carrying that monster’s offspring and going through labor, even to give the child away. That would have been the unkindest cut of all.

For women and girls, safe legal abortions are essential. While many will choose a different path than I with their pregnancies, having that choice is essential. Any encroachment on that right is an encroachment on the life, liberty, and safety of the women and girls of America.

According to First Coast News, a Jacksonville, Florida church has separated children out from their congregation so a pastor who confessed to sexual crimes against two young girls can continue preaching.

Former Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church pastor Darrell Gilyard was just released from prison in December. He’s now delivering sermons at Christ Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church on North Davis Street.

Gilyard is now a registered sex offender and is on sex offender probation until December of 2014 according to the Department of Corrections.

While serving as pastor of Shiloh in 2008, he surrendered to police in 2008 and admitted to committing sex crimes against two girls under the age of 16.

While he was the pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church Gilyard molested a 15-year-old girl and sent a lewd text message to another. Under the conditions of his plea agreement, Gilyard cannot have “unsupervised contact with children under 18 years old,” and in separating children from the congregation, “his new church has taken extraordinary steps to help Gilyard stick to the terms of his deal.”

“All these people over here are trying to do is worship, which is what you all ought to be doing,” said one church member when asked his opinion by First Coast News.

“He’s preaching the Lord’s word and he can be wherever he wants to,” said Lindy Brown.

Another parishoner said “it’s proof of how passionate the congregation is about Gilyard returning to leadership.”

“I’m passionate about doing the right thing and the right thing is giving another person another chance,” said Smith.

This chance also helps Christ Tabernacle out financially. Attendance was down, but with Gilyard it has increased.

Church members say it was the best decision, based on their beliefs.

“That’s what God would have us do. He would have us to appreciate everybody for who they are because none of us are without sin,” said one parishoner.

According to parishoners, Gilyard is not on the payroll at the church, so he’s not being paid for his services, but “will most likely get donations for his services.” Gilyard did not give any comments to First Coast News for this story.

]]>http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/02/21/florida-church-bans-children-to-protect-pastor-registered-as-child-sex-offender/feed/4The Polanski Question: Why Does The Hollywood Elite Continue to Excuse Rape and Violence?http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2009/10/06/the-polanski-question-why-does-the-hollywood-elite-continue-excuse-rape-and-violence/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-polanski-question-why-does-the-hollywood-elite-continue-excuse-rape-and-violence
http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2009/10/06/the-polanski-question-why-does-the-hollywood-elite-continue-excuse-rape-and-violence/#commentsTue, 06 Oct 2009 06:00:00 +0000Every time a man assaults a woman with lower social status; a frat boy rapes a sorority girl, an athlete rapes a fan, or a famous musician beats his girlfriend, the excuses are the same.

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Even though it’s far from the most pressing news story of
the day, it was hard to turn away from the extreme, voluminous response to
Roman Polanski’s arrest in Switzerland and his likely extradition to the United
States to finally face sentencing for a crime he committed 32 years ago, when
he drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl who, according to her testimony to the
grand jury, protested every step of the way and begged to go home.The fallout had less to do with any
question about the details of the case—it seems they were never really in
question—and more about a group of highly privileged wealthy people excusing
child rape while the rest of the country gapes in disbelief.

Initially, it seemed most of the lashing out at the French
political elite, Hollywood movers and shakers, and clueless pundits who
defended Polanski came from feminists, for whom angrily reminding people that
rape is a crime has become routine.But then I started to see conservatives jump on board the same wagon, creating a weird
alliance.Unfortunately, right
wing bloggers tend to get more up in arms about the rare false rape accusation
than the exponentially more common problem of rape, and what little anti-rape
blogging I’ve seen from them centers around painting Islamic cultures as
hopelessly misogynist (while ignoring the misogyny in our own).So what accounted for the outrage?The youth of the victim?

Then it dawned on me that it was because the people
defending Polanski were straight out of the right wing playbook on who to
demonize: Hollywood liberals and the French being the primary targets.(Never mind that online polls showed
that 70%
of French respondents wanted Polanski to be sentenced for rape.)This muddled the conservative support for this particular
feminist cause considerably, as it gave Polanski defenders some evidence for
their outrageous assertion that Polanski was being targeted not because he’s a
child rapist, but because he’s a French citizen who makes artful movies, and
Americans are a bunch of philistines.I would disagree, for instance, that I’m a philistine, but I can’t
dispute that the anti-Polanski crowd had some philistines in our camp.But we had everyone in our camp!Very few people are comfortable with
the idea that a child rapist should elude justice because he’s rich or because
he directed Chinatown.

But even liberals who usually poo-pooh right wing complaints
about the French, Hollywood, and liberal “elites” had to admit that Polanski
defenders were fitting the right wing stereotypes of decadent liberalism to a
"T." Katha
Pollitt described the situation as showing “the liberal cultural elite at
its preening, fatuous worst.” Jeff
Fecke noted that Hollywood culture, particularly with the heavy use of the
casting couch, is the dictionary definition of a rape culture, and that makes
it easy for Polanski supporters to just chalk up what he did to a 13-year-old
as normal.No doubt the
proliferation of precocious child stars who have disturbing sex lives and drug
use informs their opinion, as well.

But I’d suggest that the Hollywood rush to defend Polanski
is something simpler: the same apologism you see every time a man assaults a
woman with the same or lower social status that he has.Every time a frat boy rapes a sorority
girl, an athlete rapes a fan, a famous musician beats his girlfriend, a
bunch of rich high school kids rape a classmate, high
school athletes rape a mentally retarded girl, or a Hollywood star takes
advantage of an underage girl, the story is the same: The man or men can expect
friends, family, admirers, and perfect strangers invested in the sexist status
quo to rally around and support him while denouncing the victim as a liar and a
slut who asked for it.

The saddest part of the Polanski defense is how it sounds
like every other rape apologist excuse that gets trotted out every time this
happens.The excuses are so common
that various bingo cards have been made to mock the excuses. Here’s an example of a
bingo card, and it’s easy to match these standard excuses to the Polanski
case.

He’s rich; we all know what she’s
after, hmmm?As Katha
Pollitt noted, Polanski defenders like Joan K. Shore accused the victim’s mother
of being a grabby stage mom, as if this justifies raping her daughter.

She was a slutty groupie.In the shamelessly dishonest
documentary defending Polanski called “Roman Polanski: Wanted and
Desired”, friends of his actually lean on the fact that the victim wasn’t
a virgin to justify raping her.

But the police investigated and didn’t
press charges.The
Polanski version of this is assuming that because he pled down to sex with
a minor, then it was no big deal.The truth is that he drugged her and raped her over her protests.

Hearing
this must be so hard for his family.This apologist excuse has been beefed up tremendously
because Polanski, who has survived both the Holocaust and having his wife
murdered by the Manson family, has suffered so much.

I could go on, but you get the idea.We don’t need to believe that Hollywood
culture is unique or that this is a manifestation of these people’s particular
evil to understand this situation. The only thing unique about this round of
rape apologism is that the defenders have an especially loud megaphone.

It’s been remarked upon that this list of celebrities
who’ve denounced Polanski is populated with a lot more B-listers, C-listers
and worse than the list of Polanski defenders.That strikes me less as evidence that less talented people
have more moral grounding (anyway, there are some really amazing artists on
that list) than evidence that Polanski’s friends are all at the top of the heap
in Hollywood.People who don’t run
in his elite circles and have no occasion to meet him or much hope of working with him
aren’t invested in believing that he’s a good guy, and so are free to see the
situation for what it is.Kevin
Smith and Chris Rock obviously can’t be touched by Polanski or punished for
coming out against what he did, and I think that more than anything explains
this disparity.